Cold in July

26

It was a hot Sunday with a hot wind blowing through the pines like a diseased cough, carrying a hint of dead fish from Lake LaBorde. The birds were making small talk in the trees like it was more of an obligation than a desire; they sounded like they needed air-conditioning.

I know Ann and I did. We were taking turns leaning over the backyard grill cooking hamburgers and wishing we’d fixed tuna-fish sandwiches inside. Jordan was taking it well enough though. He was sitting on the patio playing with a toy car and making motor sounds.

I’d just flipped the meat when I heard the phone in the kitchen, and I went inside to answer it.

It was Jim Bob.

“What’er y’all doing?”

“Grilling some burgers, sweating like peasants.”

“Sounds good.”

“The sweating or the grilling?”

“Both, I reckon. I been in this damn room so much I need a good honest sweat. The bottoms of my feet are starting to grow carpet.”

“Well, come out.”

“Can you put up with Russel too?”

“Jordan’s here, and…well, you know what happened.”

“I know, but I’ve got something important to tell the two of you. Can you make some kind of arrangements? A baby-sitter?”

“It’ll be a little inconvenient, but I guess I can talk to the Fergusons. They still owe us a few babysittings.”

“Good.”

“This news you want to tell us. Is it good?”

“Good? Well, I don’t know if it is or not, but it’s news. I’ve made some headway. I know what happened to Freddy, and I know how to find him.”

“That’s good news.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Is he alive?”

“I think so.”

“Isn’t that good news for Russel?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“What’s all the mystery, Jim Bob?”

“It’ll be easier to explain when I get there. I’ll bring some beer.”

“Good enough. See you in a while.”

“By the way, I like mine well-done. When that sucker is smoking it’s cooking, when it’s black it’s done.”

“One hockey puck coming up.”

The burgers were done long before Russel and Jim Bob arrived, and we set them in the microwave until we wanted to warm them up again. We fixed Jordan his, and he ate, and I called the Fergusons and asked if it was okay if we brought him over. They agreed and Ann drove him there and came back madder than when she left-and that was pretty mad. She didn’t want Russel over for dinner. In her mind, it was like inviting Hitler. What she wanted was to jab him in the eye with a pointed stick and nail his head to a post. Maybe put turpentine on his balls and light it. Just to be contrary, she said we’d eat outside on the redwood table. She wouldn’t have that man in her house-again.

By the time they showed the wind had turned savage and stale and the mosquitoes, like bomber squadrons, had started to move out of the woods in search of prey. But it was getting late enough that the sun was moving westward and the grill had cooled, so it wasn’t as hot as it had been. Instead of quick frying, we were simmering.

I heard the Red Bitch come into the drive, and I went around and met them and led them around back. When Russel saw Ann he began having trouble with his hands. He didn’t know where to put them. He tried by his sides and in his pockets, but they didn’t seem to fit or hang right, mostly just fluttered about as if trying to escape from his wrists. I’d never seen him so flustered as when he was in Ann’s presence.

Jim Bob didn’t seem to notice. He held up a six-pack of Lone Star and Ann took it and put it in the fridge inside. She started the burgers microwaving. I had Jim Bob and Russel sit down at the redwood table, and I went inside and got the fixings and brought them out on a tray.

Ann brought the burgers and some beers, and we each fixed our buns with mustard, lettuce, tomatoes, the whole shooting match. The only one that really did any talking was Jim Bob. He talked about the weather and the price of gasoline and about how the LaBorde police had been following him around like a baby duck following its mama, then he turned to Russel and said in the same tone of voice, “I found out what happened with Freddy, Ben.”

Russel paused, tried to find what he wanted to say. “Is he-”

“Far as I know he’s right as rain in the health department, but I’m not sure you’re gonna like what I have to say.”

“Say it,” Russel said.

“All right. There’s a whole flock of ways to find a missing person, and if I don’t know all of them, I ain’t short of the rest of them by more than one or two, and I figure if they were any good I’d know them.” ight="0em" width="1em" align="left"›“You don’t lack for confidence, do you?” Ann said. “No,” Jim Bob said. “I know what I can do, and what I can’t do, and one of the things I can do is find people. It ain’t because I’m such a smart sumbitch, though I guess I’ll do in a pinch, it’s because I got connections. You get lots of connections when you been in this business long as I have. But I’ll get to the connections later.

“I moseyed down to the newspaper here for starters. Figured as this was Freddy’s last known stomping grounds, least according to the police, might be mention of him in the papers somewhere. Not just counting obituaries, damn near everybody shows up in the rags eventually, in some manner or another, so it’s a good place to start. Same method of research you used, Ben, when you were finding out about Dane here.”

“Don’t remind me,” Russel said.

“Yes,” Ann said, “don’t remind us.”

“I went over to the paper to see what I could turn up, and damn if I didn’t find a couple mentions of Freddy. One of them was about Dane shooting him, which we know he didn’t, since it was some other poor bastard, and that one didn’t get front page, but it didn’t get last page neither. It was placed a little too casually in the middle. Meaning, they wanted a lot of people to see that dude, but not get the impression they were advertising. It wasn’t a big article and it didn’t go into details, but it managed to mention Freddy’s name four times.”

“Just in case someone might miss it,” Ann said.

“Yep,” Jim Bob said. “The paper, or whoever was instructing the paper, wanted to be right sure someone out there thought Freddy had bit the big one. That’s why the cops took advantage of this burglar thing and tagged the body with Freddy’s name. If Freddy’s dead, then there’s nothing but a cold trail, and ain’t no use in anyone looking for him.”

“Why would anyone be looking for him in the first place?” Russel said.

“Getting to that. I said I found two mentions of Freddy. Other was about a month earlier. Said one Freddy Russel was going to turn state’s evidence on a bunch the paper called the Dixie Mafia.”

“Hell,” I said, “I remember seeing that. Went in one eye and out the other. And I sure don’t remember Freddy’s name.”

“No reason you should. That article was tucked on a back page and was about a paragraph and Freddy’s name was mentioned once. I’m sure if the FBI had its way, it wouldn’t have been mentioned at all. But they took some pains to correct that a month later when they gave that dead burglar Freddy’s handle.”

“The FBI?” Russel said.

“Those are the fuckers behind all this,” Jim Bob said. “That’s why Price let you out, Ben. It was the wiser thing to do under the circumstances. They didn’t want you and Dane raising a stink that would point to Freddy again. Price is probably like most local law. He don’t give a damn for feds, but he’s got to grease their assholes if he wants to or not. And when this burglar came up colder than a carp, he saw what the FBI was looking for. A goat. And better yet, the fucker’s killed right killed rhere in Freddy’s own town. It’s a match made in fucking heaven’s what it is. His identity for ole Freddy’s. The guy you killed, Dane, probably didn’t have a family or anyone he could be hitched to easy, so they gave him Freddy’s name.”

“Okay,” I said. “But I still don’t understand why.”

“What I got from that little paragraph in the paper,” Jim Bob said, “is that Freddy was with these Mafia types, doing whatever Mafia types do, and things got shitty and the shit got over his head, and the law came down on him, and to keep from getting mashed under their boot heels or those of his ole buddies, he sang like a fucking parakeet with a hot coat hanger up its ass.”

“And in return,” Russel said, “they gave him immunity.”

“Uh huh,” Jim Bob said, “and they went him one better. They didn’t announce it, but it seems logical to ole Jim Bob here that since the dead Freddy ain’t the right Freddy, they had plans for the right Freddy all along. They tucked him underground. That was probably part of the deal all the time. Freddy agreed to sing for a new identity, and the FBI went for it, and when he was through with the concert, they pretended to let him free for a time, when he was in fact hidden. So the Dixie Mafia is running around looking for him so they can skin the hide off his balls, and not too long after, this asshole breaks into your house, you shoot him-”

“And when I ask Price if he knows him, he says yes on the spot and sticks him with Freddy’s name,” I said.

“Bet he did know him,” Jim Bob said. “Knew enough about him to think he could get away with it. Saw what the feds were needing, and maybe Price saw a promotion out of it, a feather in his cap somehow. He called the FBI, told them what had happened and what he had done, and the big boys went for it. If they’d hated his idea, he’d have called you back and said it was all a mistake. The fella killed wasn’t Freddy Russel after all. He just thought it was cause they looked a little alike, and-”

“None of this would have happened,” I said.

“That’s the size of it,” Jim Bob said. “Price has been trying to cover his and the feds’ tracks ever since.”

“I’m beginning to understand how my wife died like she did,” Russel said. “She was lying to me about Freddy. He was trouble all along.”

“Like his old man,” Ann said, and if you could sharpen words and throw them, hers would have gouged out the back of Russel’s head about a foot.

Russel looked at her and there was no sarcasm in his voice when he said, “Just like him.”

“You know where Freddy is, don’t you Jim Bob?” I said.

“Yep,” Jim Bob said. “A lot of what I’m telling you was guesswork at first. Just me looking at a thing and putting it in line with my experience and coming out with what seemed likely. But I’ve verified it all, and found out some more since, and I do know where he is.”

Russel got out a cigarette and lit it. I noticed his hands were trembling slightly. Your own flesh and blood can do that to you.

“If you know,” Russel said too casually, “then the Dixie Mafia can find out too, can’t they?”

“Maybe,” Jim Bob said, “But they got to have the right connections. And I think if it was that easy for the witnesses to be found, there wouldn’t be any relocation program. The FBI folks may not be Einsteins, but they ain’t as dumb as the news people want you to think. And they’re pretty damn loyal-least to one another. They might tell someone they trust something they shouldn’t, but most of them wouldn’t give a thug the time of day. And if things start looking bad for their witnesses, the people they’ve relocated, they usually move them. That’s not to say they hang out with the people they move night and day. They don’t. They get them set, let them go, and give them a number to call if they have problems. They’re pretty much on their own after that. But that’s because the FBI has pretty good faith in its relocation programs. Once in a while there’s a hole somewhere and a bug gets in the batter, but not much. They hide a lot of folks when you get right down to it, and most of those folks stay hidden.”

“What kind of connections do you have?” I asked.

“Ben,” Jim Bob said, “you remember Calvin Hedges?”

“Arrested me for drinking a couple of times over in Smith County. Kept me overnight and let me loose. Hell, I was just a kid then. He still alive? He must be eighty years old.”

“Eighty-five,” Jim Bob said. “Claims his pecker still gets hard as a screwdriver. He isn’t sheriff anymore, but his boy Calvin, Junior, works for the FBI, and old Calvin owed me a couple of big favors. I called in one of them.

“I had him phone his boy and have the boy call me. Took a couple of days to arrange it on account of Junior was out of pocket, but he did call and said he’d do me the favor.”

“Pretty agreeable, wasn’t he?” I said.

“Like I said, his old man owed me a couple of favors, and the boy wanted to help pay them off. One of the favors the old man owed me had to do with Junior his ownself, and Junior knew it. He also knows I’m one of the good guys, and he was willing, after a line of bullshit, and me putting it on him pretty hard about how he and his old man owed it to me, to tell me what I wanted.”

“Freddy’s location,” I said.

“Wasn’t that easy. He wasn’t gonna put his neck in the noose that far. But he works in the records department and he gave me an access code to the central FBI computer. That’s kind of like a gal giving you the key to her apartment. I got another code or two from him and… Well, to make this a little easier on you folks, a computer, if you know what you’re doing, is a sneaky booger. There’ve been fifteen-year-old kids that knew how to use them and managed to break codes as tough as the Department of Defense. It takes time to do something like that, but you can damn sure do it. You got to first get some of them low-level access computers to give you what you need, and you use them to move up to the superusers. And if you’re real good like me, and you can get the codes you need without having to hunt for them, you can save yourself a lot of time and wiggle in there like a snake, and get what you want with less chance of getting caught with your drawers down. Them computers are something. You take one of them dudes and a modem and you can damn near do anything but walk the dog with ’em.”

“You know how to do all that?” Russel said. “You know about computers? Where’d you learn that?”

Jim Bob looked hurt. “A manual, you jackass. Hell, I’m smart as a whip. You know that. And I got sense enough to know you got to keep up with the times. Just because man was born with his butt hanging out didn’t mean he had to stay that way. He made clothes out of a bear’s hide, then cotton, then that synthetic shit. Same way with computers. That’s how things are now. You don’t keep up, it’s like some gal using the rhythm method instead of the pill. It don’t make sense.”

“Or,” Ann said, “it’s kind of like a man depending on a woman for birth control instead of caring enough to do something about it himself.”

“All right,” Jim Bob said. “You got your lick in. That too. And besides, you can get these little games to go with computers, and they’re neater’n hell. They got this one with this monkey that climbs a ladder and throws coconuts, and there’s all sorts of traps and pitfalls for the monkey, and it’s a challenge, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. There’s some others I been wanting to try, but they don’t just give those dudes away, you know.”

“Guess this is what you meant when you told Russel Radio Shack, huh?” I said.

“Yeah. And by the way, you just bought yourself a computer and modem for your business, I don’t need one. I got a big system at home.”

“I don’t want to buy a computer, and you said your fee didn’t count expenses.”

“I consider this an exception,” Jim Bob said.

I started to argue with him but decided it wasn’t worth it. Jim Bob was like a force of nature. If you were going to deal with him, you had to accept the consequences. The hard part would be dealing with Ann later. I hoped I could convince her my business needed a computer. I refused to look at her; things would be bad enough with her after they left.

“All right,” I said. “I roll over. Tell us what you found out for Christsakes, and just get on with it.”

“Bottom line,” Jim Bob said, “is he’s in Houston, using the name Fred Miller. The question now is, do we want to take this thing any further.” Jim Bob turned to Russel. “He’s your son, Ben, and it’s your choice. If you want to find him, we’ll do it. If not, we’ll just let it go, find out what Dane wants to know and the rest of it is so much wind.”

“He doesn’t sound like what I had in mind,” Russel said.

“He’s your son and you’ve come this far,” Jim Bob said, “and now that he’s away from that Dixie Mafia bunch, maybe things could be different. I don’t think he’s gonna be singing no hymns or nothing, but he might turn out all right. He might not even have been into anything real bad, just found out some real bad things. Maybe he squealed cause it was getting on his conscience… On the other hand, things could turn out a lot worse than you can imagine.”

Russel looked at me. “If you still have a mind to finance me so you can find out what you want to knou want ow too, then I’m for going on.”

“Can’t turn back now,” I said. “I’ve got to know.”

“See it through no matter what it costs you, huh?” Ann said.

I looked at her. “Sorry, but yeah.”

She shook her head but didn’t say anything.

“All right then,” Jim Bob said, “we do it. Tomorrow night, late, we leave this chickenshit town. I got me a promise to keep tomorrow, and I won’t be free till late.”

“What kind of promise?” Russel asked.

Jim Bob grinned. “Well, I promised this sweet little thing that works at the hotel restaurant that she could have my undivided attention all day, and I don’t break my promises. Besides, it wouldn’t be gentlemanly to deny her what may be the most rewarding experience of a lifetime.”

“I said it earlier,” Ann said, “and I’ll say it again. You don’t lack for confidence.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Jim Bob said.